


Hide and Seek

by cxmmanderhill



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Avengers, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21720415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxmmanderhill/pseuds/cxmmanderhill
Summary: tony has the bright idea to play a game of hide and seek in stark tower. natasha and steve both bet ten dollars that they will be the winner.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Hide and Seek

Tony cheerfully skips towards the five Avengers sitting down at the dining table. The group whisper and laugh as Tony approaches.

"What's so funny?"

"You." Natasha laughs. "Why are you so... happy?" She continues in fake disgust. Tony's lips thin.

"Because I have a wonderful idea."

"Oh great," Steve mutters sarcastically. "The last wonderful idea you had resulted in the Hulk throwing Thor out of a window!"

"It was lucky I had my trusty Mjolnir at hand!" Thor exclaims.

"Sorry about that," Bruce mutters timidly, Clint patting him sympathetically on the back.

"I promise you it's good this time." Tony pleads. There's a chorus of disagreement from the five Avengers. "Just give me a chance!"

"Fine. What's your wonderfully amazing idea, Stark?" Clint replies with a long sigh.

"Game night!" The Avengers stare at him blankly.

"Game night?" Thor asks. The team can see the gears in his head slowly turning. "Like..." He pauses, thinking. He always has to translate Asgardian terms to Midgardian ones. "A gladiator battle?"

"What? No! We're not killing each other!" Clint exclaims, worry in his voice. There's a brief silence, "Right, Tony?"

"What? Oh, no, no! That'd be stupid!"

"What games do you have in mind?"

"Well, Bruce, I was thinking maybe some classics."

"Like, Hide and Seek?" Bruce asks.

"Exactly! Great minds really do think alike."

Clint groans loudly while Natasha laughs. "No fair! Natasha always wins Hide and Seek!"

"It's true, I do. None of you can beat me."

"Ten bucks say you're wrong," Steve replies as he leans against the wall. Natasha gets up from the table and walks towards him, her signature smirk laced across her face.

"Oh really? You're, what," She raises her hand as high as it will reach, which is only just at Steve's height, "six-foot-three? What do you know about hiding?"

"I'm six-two, actually, and I will win. You remember I was a five-foot-four asthmatic, right? I hid from bullies all the time."

"You're on, Rogers. You're going to lose another ten bucks to SHIELD." 

"I'll call Maria and ask if she or Fury want to play," Clint suggests, getting out his phone.

"Good idea. The more people the better. I'll call Rhodey and Pepper, they might be up for a game or two."

After about ten minutes, Maria Hill and Rhodey show up.

"Fury says he's too old for party games," Maria says apologetically.

"Yeah, and Pepper's busy with the company."

"Don't worry, I get it." He replies, causing Natasha and Rhodey to raise an eyebrow doubtfully. "Hey! I do know how to run my own company!"

"Sure you do, buddy, sure you do," Rhodey replies, patting him on the back. "So, are we going to play now or not?"

"Yep! You're counting, Banner." Tony says with a smile.

"That's not fair!"

"Go on, take one for the team."

"Fine. What number am I counting to?"

"A hundred," Tony replies. "It's a big tower."

"Yes, we get it, Stark, you're rich," Clint replies sulkily, causing Tony to laugh.

"No leaving the tower to hide, guys. Stay on the top fifteen floors, too. It'd take Bruce days to find us otherwise."

"It'll take him days to find me anyway," Natasha replies arrogantly.

"And it'll take him weeks to find me!" Steve replies with an equal arrogance.

"One." Bruce begins, causing the Avengers to sprint off. Clint and Tony go left, Steve and Rhodey head right, Natasha and Maria run down the stairs, while Thor climbs towards the kitchen a floor above them. Tony, Natasha and Rhodey both know this tower inside and out, giving them the advantage.

* * *

Tony runs along the wall, tapping his knuckle against the paint ever few seconds. Clint stops to stare at him in a mix of amusement and confusion.

"What on God's green Earth are you doing?"

"Bingo!" Tony cheers as they watch the wall slide forwards. "It's a secret route I built a few years ago. It takes me to the room where I keep the old and ruined Iron Man suits." He quickly slips behind the wall, and it slots back into place. Clint smirks and rips a sticky note from the pad on the table. He scribbles down a little note and sticks it on the wall.

"Good luck hiding now." He mutters before running off. 

* * *

Natasha boosts Maria up into the vents and they smile at each other. 

"Good luck, Hill."

"Hey, Romanoff, where are you going to hide?"

"That's a secret I'll never tell," Natasha replies before passing her the gate for the vent and running off. Maria begins crawling through the vents and soon bumps into Clint.

"What are you doing here?" He whispers, slightly annoyed.

"The same as you; hiding." She replies with a frown. "I can't believe you thought to go here of all places."

* * *

"Ninety-eight... Ninety-nine... One hundred..." Bruce opens his eyes and turns around. Where to look first? He walks out of the room and along the long corridor. The first door on his left is closed, so he heads that way. Maybe someone closed the door after themselves. It seems too obvious, but he might as well check anyway. He slowly opens the door and sees another long hallway, which he chooses to wander down. More and more doors line the hallway, except all of these are open. 

Bruce Banner is a very logical person, but three of the hiders are SHIELD agents. What if this is one of them and it's a trick? Natasha did manage to trick Loki, so it wouldn't be hard for her to trick Bruce. He chooses to continue down the halls until he reaches a large, almost-empty room. A few photos sit framed on a cabinet, the only piece of furniture in the room. Tony has too many rooms and too little stuff in his tower, so most rooms either remain empty or are used for storage. A small, yellow square catches Bruce's attention and he walks over.

"'Knock here to find Tony Stark. - C.B.' Okay... That's suspicious." Bruce mutters to himself as he reads the sticky note. He knocks on the side of the wall and jumps back as it slides towards him. "Maybe it isn't one of Tony's pranks then." He walks down the corridor and finds Tony leaning against the wall, his snores echoing around the room as old scraps of metal surround him. "Wake up, Tony. I found you." Bruce says, tapping Tony on the shoulder.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?" Tony screams in anger. Bruce guiltily holds up the sticky note and Tony frowns. "I hate him."

The two friends head around the rest of the floor but don't find anyone else.

"I think I heard someone head upstairs."

"Yeah, let's check." The two make it up to the next floor and find a few blue boxes and empty food packets scattered across the floor. "They weren't there before... Have I been robbed?"

Bruce turns the corner and finds the answer. "No. It's Thor. We should probably explain the game to him."

"Too late now," Tony replies with amusement as he watches Thor stuff his face with everything in the cupboards.

"Tony!" Thor exclaims as he turns around. "You must buy more of those delicious treats!"

"You mean the pop tarts?" Thor nods enthusiastically. "I had twenty unopened packets of them!"

"Not anymore," Bruce replies with a chuckle. "You're supposed to be hiding, Thor, what are you doing?"

"Eating." He replies blankly, his eyebrows furrow in confusion. "What else would I be doing, Doctor Banner?"

"Hiding? Oh, whatever. We've only got three more people to find. We'll just leave him there." Tony replies. "Finish that pop tart and then come join us. K, Thor?"

"Of course."

* * *

Clint shifts uncomfortably from inside one of the vents, the hot air blowing against his hair.

"Move," Maria whispers to him. "I need to get past. I'm not staying with you for the whole game, we'll both get caught."

"Okay, er, how do I get out of the way?"

"Crawl back over there." She whispers, pointing to a turning in the vent system. He crawls backwards and she crawls past him. "Thanks." She mutters and he crawls through the vents again, back towards the original place he was sat. Hawkeye peers through the bars as he hears a few voices and watches as Bruce and Tony walk past. Bored, he decided to pull out his phone and play some games. After a few minutes, he hears someone drag a chair across and he peers through the vent gate again. 

"Found you!" Tony says with a smile as he pulls the gate down, allowing Clint to slip through.

"You've got to be kidding me." Clint replies as he drops down onto the floor. 

"I heard your game."

"What?" He checks the volume on his phone and groans loudly. "I didn't even realise it was on."

The group find Rhodey in one of the bathrooms and Maria under Natasha's bed; an extremely brave move, which nobody thought of doing, mainly due to the high risk of death. They now only have Steve and Natasha left to find. To be fair to them both of them, especially Steve, they're very good at hiding. After about three hours, the group decides to split up. Clint searches the top two floors, Maria taking the next two, Rhodey the three after, then Thor tackling the next two, Bruce examining the three after and Tony taking the final three.

They soon find Steve in the swimming pool, soaking wet and hidden away inside one of the cupboards. At first, he's disappointed to lose to Natasha and to, once again, prove her right, but he soon beams proudly after finding out that it wasn't five minutes, but five hours.

"Why are you soaking wet?" Maria asks with a confused frown.

"I fell in the pool." He quietly admits, causing Tony to laugh loudly.

The group search all fifteen floors three more times before opting to search every floor in Stark Tower. It took two days, but they came back unsuccessful. Natasha Romanoff is nowhere to be seen.

* * *

A few days pass and the group grows worried.

"Natasha, come on! This isn't funny anymore. You won, Bruce found all of us. Please call me back." Steve pleads. He ends the call and frowns.

"Still nothing?" Tony asks rhetorically as he plays with a small knife keyring, flicking the blade open and sliding it back into the casing. He twirls the exposed blade, letting it fall through his fingers, only centimetres from his skin. It scratches against the table as he brings it down to his side.

"Nope," Steve replies, dropping and landing on the nearest seat.

"It was a rhetorical question, Rogers."

"I know." There's a long pause before Tony speaks again.

"JARVIS?" Tony asks as it clicks in his mind.

"Yes, sir?"

"Oh my god, why didn't we think to ask JARVIS!" Steve says to himself. 

"Hey, J, can you tell us where Nat is?"

"No, sir. I'm afraid you haven't fixed your CCTV cameras."

"Shit."

"Is that bad?"

"It means that, even if I do fix the security, where Natasha hid won't be on there because they weren't recording at the time.

"Shit..."

* * *

**A week after Hide and Seek.**

Steve sits down in front of the TV and sighs, turning it on.

"What's that?"

"A TV?" Steve asks in confusion.

"No, that humming sound." Clint snatches the remote from his hand and turns the TV off, causing Steve to leap to his feet to try and take it back.

"HEY! I was watching that! The Patriots were about to score!" 

"Shut up and listen," Clint says, raising his index finger to shush the Captain.

"I can't hear anything..."

"Trust me." He replies, pointing to his hearing aid. There's a long silence as Clint tries to figure out what it is.

"What is that...?" Steve asks as his ears pick up the sound too.

"I think..." Clint walks over to the TV and peers behind it. "It's our missing team-mate." Steve walks over and looks behind the TV too. Natasha is curled up between the wall and the cupboard, quietly and gracefully snoring.

"Let's get her to bed. She'll need to eat and drink when she wakes." Steve says. Steve manages to carefully pick her up from behind the TV and he carries her to her room, delicately laying her down in her bed before pulling the duvet up to her neck. She begins stirring slightly as he tucks her in so he leaves her room, slowly pulling the door to a close. 


End file.
